Digital divide likely under Coalition plan: experts

The Coalition’s proposal would see only a fifth of Australian homes - roughly 2.8 million - connected directly to fibre-to-the-home technology, compared to the 93 per cent of premises that has been promised under Labor’s national broadband plan.
AFR

It would also guarantee speeds of at least 50 Mbps by the end of 2019.

But the Coalition’s proposal would see only a fifth of Australian homes - roughly 2.8 million - connected directly to fibre-to-the-home technology, compared to the 93 per cent of premises that has been promised under Labor’s national broadband plan.

Approximately 71 per cent of Australian homes would receive fibre-to-the-node technology instead, which sees fibre cables connected to cabinets on street corners and copper wiring used between the cabinets and homes. Shadow communications minister
Malcolm Turnbull
claimed the majority of the network would be able to achieve up to 80 Mbps speeds using currently technologies.

But University of Melbourne professor Rod Tucker warned the split could put those with direct fibre connections on unequal footing to those without it in the future.

“The people who have fibre to the premises further down the track will be in a better position than those with fibre to the node," he said. “They will have that expandability, up to a gigabit per second, or even beyond."

Mr Tucker pointed to households simultaneously using high-bandwidth applications like high-definition video and medical services as a reason to have faster speeds in the near future. Those on fibre-to-the-node, he said, would be less capable of using those same applications.

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“While there might not be a lot of difference between the two [plans] in terms of a user noticing the difference now, some years down the track there will be a difference," he said.

The Coalition’s policy also proposes to offer lower retail internet prices in future, with documents released on Tuesday suggesting consumers would pay $66 for a basic 12 Mbps plan in 2021, compared to $90 under the NBN. The lower pricing was based on an assumption that NBN Co had miscalculated data use over the next decade.

Mr Tucker said data consumption in Australia was increasing by 30 to 40 per cent per year, meaning that many consumers would need up to 100 Mbps speeds as soon as 2020. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released this week showed a 63 per cent increase in the amount of data downloaded over fixed line networks between 2011 and 2012.

“It’s all about do you build a cheaper solution now and upgrade later or do you go to something which is future-proof at a higher cost," Mr Tucker said.

Mr Turnbull has maintained that most Australians did not want higher speeds, and that “the average Australian wants this broadband thing fixed up and dealt with quickly and cost effectively".

“It leaves the door open to private industry to make up for what the government was going to do anyway so if there is an underlying demand for fibre, private players could roll it out themselves and make use of it," he said.

“If you’ve got a vested interested in having higher-speed internet to homes, you could subsidise it in ways so if you’re a cable operator or a Google Fibre-type play, that leaves the door open and creates opportunities for industry to fill in the gaps.

He said broadband had the potential to be a chicken-or-egg situation - the applications that make use of high-speed internet may only be developed once fast internet speeds become widely available.

Communications Minister
Stephen Conroy
on Tuesday cited health and education services as some of the applications needing “stable connectivity" under a network like Labor’s to be used fully.

“I’m willing to back Australians that their innovation, their ability to use the national broadband network to create new things that people haven’t thought of yet," he said.